[INDOLOGY] Alchemy metaphor

[Dominik Wujastyk]

​Just on the pitta/pīta issue, these are, from the point of view of
historical phonology, alternants of the same word meaning "yellow" (cf. law
of morae; Mayrhofer). Bile, pitta, in Indian medicine, was "[yellow, pīta]
bile."  The word pīta occurs very frequently in ayurvedic sentences in
close collocation with the word pitta (e.g., see this listing of
collocations
<http://sarit.indology.info/newphilo/search3t?dbname=indologica&word=.*pitt.*+.*p%C4%ABt.*&OUTPUT=conc&CONJUNCT=PROXY&DISTANCE=5&title=&author=>).
So I think this semantic connection was alive in the minds of ayurvedic
authors.  This deserves proper study.

India did not evolve the concept of "black bile" (Gk. melancholia) that
evolved in Hippocratic medicine.

Best,
Dominik


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